100 Themes Challenge: Themes 1-5

LIFE

All her life had led to this very moment.
Driving through New York, she realized that her dream was finally about to come true.
After all the long hours writing columns for the local news in her study back in Holland,
and long before that the countless exams all through 13 years of studying, this was what it all culminated to.
At the other end of traffic a publisher who had agreed to publish her first book, waited for her.
From very early on, she had wanted to write a novel about true love,
friendship and the mysterious way in which life can suddenly decide to change its course.
Like on the crossing between 14th Street and 1st Avenue,
where life suddenly decided a black sedan was running a red light into her taxi.

YOUTH

Jane and Eric were playing on the swing by the river.
It was a bright day in the middle of the summer holiday.
After Eric, it was Jane’s turn.
She got on the swing, and he gave her a gentle push in the back.
Jane giggled gleefully and urged Eric to push stronger and stronger.
Jane swung higher and higher into the air.
And then Jane soared through the sky.
She splashed into the river,
crashing her skull on the riverbed.

CONTENT

Surrounded by family, children and grandchildren, Nestor lay in his hospital bed.
The room was simple but homely, and flooded with flowers and love.
In his fading memory he firmly held on to his firstborn child who had become a lawyer,
the gleeful kid that had become a stay at home dad,
and his youngest who had gone into the romantic life of an actor.
He remembered all the grandchildren on the days of their first birthdays or on the days of their graduation,
even if their names were a bit foggy.
When the nurse came to direct him to the operation,
he had greeted each of them for the last time.

CHANGE

The king was shoved on the apparatus in a particularly unroyal fashion.
At the general’s signal a drumroll started.
The king’s nerves were taut as the straps keeping his neck under the blade.
He could smell the disdain of the roaring crowd,
louder even than the swelling rumble heralding his death.
As the thunder ended, so did his life and with it the monarchy.
The king’s head turned independently of his body.
As his blood streamed out of his severed neck,
he saw his palace for the last time, with a new flag flying above his towers.

DREAMS

Lucidity is a daunting ideal - a vision right between too much and too little dreams. In the alley behind the McDonalds, I inject the pain-killing - mind-numbing - dream-bringing substance on a regular basis. I feel like the Cartesian ‘I’ in me starts to dissipate into the environment. As the Gar-Bag-Can becomes part of the existence previously limited to my body, I should’ve started wondering if I hadn’t used too much this time. As I enlarge and erase the boundaries of my existence, the point has come where everything is me. Yet I will never again concentrate my consciousness to the physical hull that was me.